Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 5

8/8/2019 Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 5

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2001

Ma

Waterways:Poetry in the Mainstream


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Waterways: Poetry in the MainstreamMay 2001

A California song,A prophecy and indirection, a thought impalpable to breathe aA chorus of dryads, fading, departing, or hamadryads depart

A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky,Voice of a mighty dying tree in the redwood forest dense.

Walt Whitman "Song of the Redwood Tree"


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WATERWAYS: Poetry in the MainstreamVolume 22 Number 5 May, 2001Designed, Edited and Published by Richard Spiegel & Barbara FisherThomas Perry, Admirable Factotum

c o n t e n t s

Waterways is published 11 times a year. Subscriptions -- $25 a year. Sample issues -$2.60 (incpostage). Submissions will be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelWaterways, 393 St. Pauls Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10304-21272001, Ten Penny Players Inc.

http://www.tenpennyplayers.org

Fredrick Zydek 4-5

Will Inman 6-12

Ida Fasel 13-17

John Grey 18

Geoff Stevens 19Bill Roberts 20-21

Joanne Seltzer 22-23

Sylvia Manning 24-26

David Michael Nixon 27-28

Paul Grant 29-30

Don Winter 31Gerald Zipper 32

Arthur Winfield Knight

Albert Huffstickler 3

cover photo by B. Fisher

Frontispiece chromolitho(1864) by Albert Biersta


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Nebraska Storm - Fredrick Zydek

It began with trees dancingin the river's image of the sky,the river blinking back the rain,the rain weeping like lost love.That loss went wild in the winduntil the wind wailed like a banshee.

Then the thunder came and its strange light.

That light cracked open the skylike an enormous egg. The sky beganto thump and rage. Rage becomes a celestialstallion trying to outrun the paramourgods of wind and windy claws.

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The storm drives us to the basement.We descend the stairs like we do our lives -several steps at a time. Time waits,fills itself with whatever light it can.That light shimmers through everything.It is the light that keeps hope terribly alive.

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a tribe of being - will inman

this gasline i walk nearly every daybears dust that once lived in tribal individuals.

all the events that made them a peoplestill live in each fleck of dust and dirt.

otherrhythms, runnings and leapings and restingsof coyotes, javelinas, pocket gophers, blackrainbow birds, owls, hawks, doves, dragonflies,combine with human pulses to keep alive all

events among. my skin scrapings, now turneddust join these broken carriers. werise in

dances of dust devils, we soar with wind.ancient mammoths

plod alongside us, we areremembered in each other's scattered minglings.

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starbursts made our single generationspossible: now winds impregnate god with allwe've been through.

voices of mesquite

and greasewoodtell our wordless histories.

alone or together, we are indivisibly one vastprocess. spiders

spin their webs from ourstretchings, we born and we bloom each other.moon

covets and enters motions of our sapand of our blood. sunhumps and hampers

as we begin over and over again

first published in The Lucid Stone Winter 20

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a tree born - will inman

a tree born of love between a mountain and low countrya presence in whom all things are known and rememberedwe cut her down, we chop ourselves, we emasculatea woods god.

our dominion over comes a curselaid on us by Yahweh: we were born to bestewards of questions we must ask God, we must askourselves

24 November 2000,

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a far place - will inman

under my feet lives a far place.an acorn waits in a clump of grass.

i pull up the grass and cover the acorn with dirt.what was i doing meddling with time and space?

why didn't i let acorn plant herself in her own time?suppose something would have moved acorn to a better place

without knowing what it was doing. an acorn

growing into an oak tree is a slow volcano.

a rooted tornado. an avatar of a still elephant.a cathedral where a raincrow calls her lies.

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does an oak tree live in air and earth?do earth and air and light live in an oak?

does an oak tree live in a small plot of earth?does an oak tree live in the whole round earth?

i used to hear raincrows calling in giant sycamores.sycamores are white with large scabs of brown bark.

oak trees and sycamores sing groaning in hurricanes.

sycamore balls break into tiny parachutes.i heard a wood thrush singing love in a dogwood tree.a far place lives under my feet live in a far place.

From Earth's Daughters #5

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black angel - will inman

Even in his eighties, heclimbed the lattice fence into our yard

to feed the chickens, bring in lightwood,then logs, to start morning firesin the livingroom fireplace.

Undergrizzle of hair and brows, his eyesshone bright and kind.

I was elevenor twelve when he took sick and died. Hewas the only ex-slave I ever knew.Worked all his life . . .

Never seemed to occurto my uncle (behind whose great house

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Henry Williams lived in an ancientcottage) or my father to retire himon a pension. A kindness, they thought,to pay him a bare survival wage for

chores.Good upstanding Christian

whites took are of theirdarkies. 'We'll all be white inHeaven, Son,' Dad assured me.

Took meawhile to take it in that Thatwas a good reason not to want to goThere.

27-28 August 1999

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Conversations - Ida Fasel

A brown thrasher viewing the world from the phone lineis sending out notes in an order of song

not the call, the field guide's catch-phrasebut an aria floated over and over, a rippleand flourish of melody swiftly passing,artful, intense, tiny, complete.

Is he saying from where he's sittingNice up here but no plan to stay?Is he sending out first advertisementsflouting his maleness in advance of himself?

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He spreads wings, descends to the grass,discreetly looks around. Approaching the house, headdresses it with a bright cadenza full of detail.

What fellow bird told him I was a soft touch?Is he telling me he's thirsty, he sings betterwhen the sprinkler arches a rainbow in its spray?

If our mental worlds could meet in that dimensionwhere movement, color and song are the language,he would know my answer to his eloquenceis delight in the whorls of my ears.

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Messages - Ida Fasel

A sparrow is singing unseen. A mourningdove coos, thoughtful, plaintive, peaceful.

Muscles chant me to the park,the faint sound of TV followingfrom houses in the street.

The horizon billows with pennantsof crimson yellow orange gold.Is it sunrise? Is it sunset?It is east, and I am in lovewith beginnings good for all day.

In the corner of my eyea hollow in a tree I pass.

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Once, an old-growth elmgave Marie Frost and me free rentalof a postal box. How we flew, buoyed upby crusty snow, pummeled by rain,

bruised barefoot on grass and twigs.

What breathless secrets did wesummon each other to hear, chatteringdetails in each other's housefamiliar as our own?

How much harder it becameto be as sure as I was thenof the secrets of the world.I held strong against the catch-alls,the alternatives without root or crown,the guidance of what's in, what's out.

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Stuck in the mudbank of a college carrel,I pulled out in morning water,footnote-free.

In the repose of the steady, strenuous motion,in the company of treeswhose earthly gift is my breath,whose combined message isTo believe, desire is enough,I pace myself home to a Bach contata,its tones gold and after-rain green,desire the mainstay, gates-of-heaven blue.

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Carousel Graveyard - John Grey

Once it rode the circle of music,followed the wooden tail

of a face it never knew.

Now, circus colorsalmost peeled awayfrom rotting wood,it's wedged in a corner,away from any rider,the whirling songa phantom in its busted skull,its three remaining hoofsbent in a parody of speed.

It can finally seethe horse it followed

for so many bars of melody,lying broken in the dustlike a long dead thoroughbredstill waiting to be shot.

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I have found - Geoff Stevens

I have found it in Eureka, California,that lumbering city of Humbold County,

its harbor a redwood shipping port,its Sequoia Park a grove of Redwoods,its very name a discovery of sorts,the cry of Archimedes eureka!

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My Life as Captain Marvel, Jr. - Bill Roberts

Captain Marvel shared his magic word, Shazam!that magically turned me into Captain Marvel, Jr.,

and we flew all over together, though never quiteleaving the boundaries of the District of Columbia.

He became invisible beside me, probably becausehe didn't want to be seen with a scrawny kidin a faded pink bathing suit, wearing a torn whitetowel subbing as a cape cinched around the neck,

the towel imprinted with a blue "M," unlessI carelessly knotted it about my neck upside down.Actually, we flew on streetcars all over town,good thing my father kept me supplied with tokens.

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We never solved any high-profile crimes together,but I take pride in the knowledge that our merepresence in a neighborhood, even though the Captain

was invisible, gave pause to many would-be perps

bent, no doubt, on committing unthinkable heinous acts.I gave up the Captain Marvel, Jr. persona as soon asI discovered the ink from the "M" got all over mewhen I toweled myself off from my weekly bath.

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California Water Log - Joanne Seltzer

San Diego. Water served only by requestin every restaurant including Anthony's

which offers french fries or pilaf with dinner,then bilks me of 75 for a baked potato.At the waterfront a homeless young manbegs carfare to the VA hospital,slinks away like one of the zoo's great cats.

San Luis Obispo. With Swiss-Italian abandonthe Madonna Inn sells water by night,but I freeload off Cousin Betty'sscant ration that she shares with tuberous begoniasand red peppers foraged by deer.I promise to wash my hair in Cambria.

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San Simeon. No water flows in the castleHearst devoted decades to unbuilding.Cary Grant, playing the favorite guest,

in deadpan called this a splendid placefor an unemployed actor to spend the depression.

Monterey. Shops have taken over Cannery Rowwhere Steinbeck's books provide local coloralongside wearable interpretations ofsea lion, sea otter, dolphin, seal and whale.

At the aquarium a well-fed sharkshares the mock ocean with selected fish.Why the sardine stopped coming nobody knows.

First appeared in Earth's Da

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Panes - Sylvia Manning

You were already beautywhen we came to this place

where now each smooth framedpiece of cooled sand vidreo/glasswhether meant to be mirroror only become sofor right action, reflection,gives moving chiaschuro printsin greens from somewhere without,

beyond these walls.

Where once only hot calichshone a body wanders safelythrough shaded rooms, comingonly once upon a photograph of you

but often to sole tree or branchin panes placed oncefor mere utility ,

as though you said to all thatmight reflect, in time, "Stay here,stay square. Shine back what green

growth comes when I am gone."Before you took your brilliance off,leaving black and white photograph,leaving.

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We Have Systems at CenterSylvia Manning

Not high tech,

more appropriate than suchto the dust we will becomewhen we becomeourselves when we belong when we be life-long siblings in filialsystem.

I search the colored egg-shaped Roma fruit,tomatoes of a vinewe never planted

(volunteer, as our grandmothers said, from left overseed on hamburger wrapperdogs drug up to litter,

near silver king artemisia,shade from dusty pre-Spring heat)

hunt these carmen coloredovals now days beforeSemana Santa, Pascua,Easter, resurrection,

season for new growthelsewhere, time for dyinghere unless your seed falls firstbeneath protective shade.

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We are systems, we are the dirtfrom whence all sustenanceoccurs, we are what the dogs

drag up, we are left-over seedson greasy dead beef wrapper,we are the volunteers on a tierof Life itself, and we aretears for those we lovedwhose flesh became embono(as border ones say

compost) long ago.

We are sprung from dirt,not Aphrodite's foam, butwe survive, with these systems,

appropriately home. We saveeach scrap of daily bread to feedagain our mother who fed us;we become layer of designthe rushed and hurried others would nsee in their grandmother's gift ofpiecework.

We are rose-hued symbols of rebirthhidden, in silver-king shade,at moist and seeded (systems-cooled)center.

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Pockets - David Michael Nixon

I have been sitting at the window,writing poems about broken glass

and the still forms of dead birds,and as I sit here,still writing,another billion dollarsenters Bill Gates' pockets,so much gravity inhis bulging pants

that he can never soar.

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All around him,poor people without pocketsbegin to rise from the earth

and bob up the airtoward the thin atmosphere,which they hope will beso light it will not holdeven their weightless beings.

Then they could settleinto the lower airand float forever,

high above Bill's head.

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Time-Clock - Paul Grant

Ash case. Brass works. Handsbent away from their pivot points

so the arms don't catch on one another,but even that's not enough: it's finally stopped.

Whether a fried field mousehas grounded it out, or the motor depression-made and faithfulthrough three wars

has burned itself to ghostno one can tell. Time. It just won't listen.

So what if there's truth in this world it obviously doesn't want to be here.

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Isn't native, has deliberatelymade a point of never learning the language& even makes faces at our efforts tocommune with it. Keeps to itself

as much as possible.

Still, the hands are frozenAt 10:20, almost as ifsomeone in a story diedthen, and something some elaborate analog mechanism

we cannot deconstruct down inside it all

actually cares.

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Eugene's Drive to WorkDon Winter

The hiss of the storm door trails him

to the car. He cranks the engine,cranks it again. Maybe he is

just like his father:same shift at Hamtramck Auto,same bottle of whiskey,same reckless fights.He backs out of the driveway

and begins to drive, but turnsand returns like a thought.He thinks of arguments he might have used,his tongue rolling them out

like dead stars. He looks in at the ligof the bar, watches it fallfrom the back of the rear view mirror

Squirrels, buzzing question marks,scamper the bridge that leads to the He thinks of all the arguments,of all the times he's wanted to leave,and he remembers: half a cityand half a shift apart makes them frieor at least makes them tolerate

crude moments they spend like that.He remembers by forgettingeverything else. Nightly, boards up hisRound here traditions are keptlike husbands, like wives.

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Mealy-Mouthed Morality -Gerald Zipper

I'm sick of all this mealy-mouthed moralitypeople are either good or they're bad

or they're just peoplelike us.

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James Dean: Maila - Arthur Winfield Knight

They're mine: the people who hang-out in all night cafeterias and coffee shops Googie's. The drugstore cowboys, the conmen, the prostitutes. The blue, the lost, tlonely. They keep the night watch and never seem to sleep. One of them calls hersVampira, but her name's Maila. She sits across from me in a back booth, whisperingknew these were my people the first time I came here. It's strange, because thereweren't any places like this in Finland." She's wearing a black body suit, and her fastark-white, layered with pancake make-up. "I used to serve drinks at a club on the but I got tired of it. Hosting old horror films on late night TV is better, but I'm getired of that, too." "You get tired of most things," I say. "I'm already tired of bein

movie star and it hasn't even happened yet." We met in the parking lot outside GoogShe'd arrived in a hearse. Leaning against me, she said we were destined for each oHer long black hair was dusted with cobwebs, and she talked incessantly about a covebelonged to somewhere in the Hollywood Hills. She asked if I'd like to see a photogof her naked standing next to Valentino's grave, holding a red rose. She was blfrom the thorns. I told her I'd never liked Valentino.

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James Dean: Billy the Kid - Arthur Winfield KnightFrom SWIMMING IN SAND, the imaginary autobiography of James Dean

My mother taught me to pretend, but she died on July 14thwhen I was nine. We'd played games every night before I went tobed. I knew I wanted to act. Sometimes now I pretend I'mBilly, walking toward the darkened house where Garrett's waiting.I'll be dead in minutes, but I don't know that. I don't want toknow. It's July 14th, hot out. I know that. In a few minutes it willbe midnight and everything will be over. There's a circle of lightaround the moon. Garrett's sitting on the edge of Maxwell's bed,

his pistol cocked. I feel breathless in the burning night air. Mexicanwomen will light candles for me and cry when I'm laid out, but itwon't matter.

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Transcendence - Albert Huffstickler

What I'd really like in my old ageis an all-night diner across the street,breakfast twenty-four hours, good coffee,

smoking in the back. I don't sleep longmost nights. Years ago, when I knew Keiththe baker across the way, I'd wake andwalk over to the bakery and visit withhim in the wee, small hours, maybe havea toke or two, listen to some weirdflying saucer, interplanetary, aliens

among-us show on the radio and thensay my good night or morning and wanderback to my place and back to sleep.It was good. But what I'd really likenow is an all-night diner. I couldclimb out of bed at two in the morning,

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cross the street and into the light andsmells of early morning, truck drivers,newspaper workers, cab drivers, (Iworked in a place like this one) andfind my booth in back and sit watchingand maybe writing while I drank mycoffee and smoked, feeling the nightoutside, not a harsh night, a benevolentnight, guarded by the city cops at thecounter, a sheriff's deputy or two,everyone caught somewhere betweensleeping and waking, a good place to

be. We need these places and they'refading fast, eaten by the chains,the mass-producers. They're gettingharder and harder to find and I veryseriously doubt that I will find oneacross the street from my apartment

before I die. But it's a nice dream.Sometimes I wake in the night andstumble to my bedroom chair and mylast night's cold cup of coffee, lighta cigarette and sit there half-asleepdreaming of just such a place. Andthe dream takes on cosmic proportionand I find myself floating upwardthrough the ceiling out into thestar-cluttered night and I'm walkingalong a road that rises up into thesky and far ahead, its lights out

shining the stars, is my diner, mycosmic diner, arms outstretched,

just waiting for me

First published in Nerve Cowboy AusNumber 10, Fa

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ISSN 0197-4777

published 11 times a year since 1979very limited printingby Ten Penny Players, Inc.(a 501c3 not for profit corporation)

$2.50 an issue

Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream Vol 22 no 5

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